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Old 14-09-2017, 08:09 PM
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Astrofriend (Lars)
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Design your own Newton telescope

Have you ever thought about why your Newton telescope has the dimension it has, primary and secondary mirror, focuser, f/number and so on?

I stumbled in to this tool Newt-Web that Kenneth H. Slater has developed further from Dale Keller's code. It's an online design tool page for Newton telescope.

It's a very intuitive page where you can put in some figures about a Newton telescope that you want to built and get back information about it's performance. It give a ray trace and important data back. From that you get understanding when a Newton telescope design is good or not.

I have done some test and written it down on my homepage so you can see the different steps and my comments:
http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/proj...telescope.html

I already know some of the physics and math, but never got to know so much in short time what happens when you change a parameter and what happens inside the telescope. Beware, I'm still in the learning process and not all what I have written is fully correct.

I recommend you to take a look at Newt-Web page even if you never will built a telescope, you get knowledge and understanding that could be very valuable when you shall buy a Newton telescope.

/Lars
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Old 15-09-2017, 08:32 AM
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ZeroID (Brent)
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Thanks Lars,
Good for budding DIY astronomers to just play with and understand optics and scope parameters.

I used the original software, probably still on my home PC, back when I first designed my 10" F5 then later when I redesigned it into it's truss format. I still refer to the web version when I get a bright idea for a new project to see what the minimum parameters are. Used for both my 8F8 Astrograph and the travelling 6F5 scope. Good for testing the focusser height and spacing.
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Old 15-09-2017, 10:36 AM
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Newtwin.exe is written for earlier versions of Windows, it works on XP..
Still have a copy, and used it for fine tuning of my 10" newtonian back in '80-ies (telescope is still operational, mirror is 35 years old, washed couple of times and it is still quite OK. I intend to use it for AP in the future).
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Old 16-09-2017, 06:33 AM
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Astrofriend (Lars)
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Hi Brent and Bojan,
We have a lot of discussion or comments about this on the Swedish forum. Now I clearly see why it's so complicated to have a coma corrector and long backfocus on a Newton telescope.

Fun to hear you used this software already long time ago.

I added my attempt to fit a 3" Wynne coma corrector on my design 12" f/4 Newton.

http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/proj...ton-v1_03.html

Today I have started to learn how to use OSLO (optic design tool). Looks to be a lot of information about how to use it. After a day of struggle I have a Newton on the OSLO screen.

/Lars
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